Blog Post #7

Adaptive technologies help people with disabilities more effectively use computing equipment. Input voice recognition software helps people who cannot type use a computer. I have never used adaptive technologies. When I did my observation hours for Introduction to Education the teacher I was assigned to had a student who did not speak English. The teacher would use an iPad with translating capabilities to talk to the student. A challenge with this was that the software did not transfer what the teacher was trying to say exactly. Also, sometimes the student was still confused about what the teacher was asking. The challenges that I perceive using adaptive technologies in my classroom is that I am not familiar with it. If I were to have someone in my class that needed to use adaptive technology I would need to learn how to use it in case they had any questions.

The new skills I acquired from working on the Web Page Design assignment was how to create a website. I did not think I would like this assignment, and I thought that creating my own web page would be hard. But, after completing the assignment I was so proud of what I created. I never thought I would be able to make something like that. It also made me appreciated all the effort that goes into making a website. It took me a long time to figure out what color text would show up on different backgrounds. This easy task was something I never thought of before. What I liked about this assignment was being able to create something that I could one day use when I am a teacher. One thing I did not like about this assignment was when I would try to add a text box I could not put it where ever I wanted and I became frustrated. I later realized that I could not put the text box wherever because I had picked a certain template for my website. In my future career, I will make a website like the one made for this assignment. I think having a website for your class is great for both parents and students.

Diigo can be useful in the classroom to post assignments and have a class discussion. As a teacher, I can post a web assignment and have the students interact with each other while at home. For example, I can assign an article to read and have students annotate the article while using Diigo. Then, other students can look and see what their classmates have annotated. I could use Diigo with other teachers to share bookmarks to things we find on the internet that might be useful for one another. In my individual professional efforts, I can use Diigo to bookmark website I find interesting and see what other people are bookmarking on Diigo.